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Jaimas Van Burace
=Lord Castellan Jaimas Van Burace= "Fall in behind me... It's time to do what we do best." - Jaimas Van Burace **Full name--** Jaimas Van Burace **Race--** Human **Age--** 37 **Eyes--** Blue **Hair--** Brown-ish Blonde **Height--** 5' 9" **Weight--** 179 Lbs. **Innate Element--** Ice **Preferred weapon(s)--** Longsword, Laspistol, Shotgun A consummate survivor of years of war, one of the foremost members of the Raxian government, and the head of the Raxian Military, Jaimas is not what most would think of when they imagine a king. Jaimas is approachable, urbane, and frequently meets with normal people in and around Raxis. A natural leader and a skilled linguist, Jaimas is not the sort to hang back, far from the front; rather, he is the sort of commander that bleeds in the trenches with his men. He instills respect and confidence in not only the Raxian soldiers, but of virtually any unit allied with the Raxian military he happens to work with. A common joke is that Jaimas could convince men to follow him into hell itself, and even allied Beastman auxilliaries, known for their distrust of outsiders, have a fair bit of respect for the Raxian commander. Jaimas is well-known for his resourcefulness and propensity for thinking "outside the box," as well as his innovative use of tactics; he is equally-known for his idealism, and is steadfast refusal to sacrifice his men for trivial gains. Jaimas has no respect for commanders who send their men into pointless meat-grinders just to secure some tiny objective; this stems from his experience in the 473rd. As Jaimas fights for his men, so too do they fight for him. Jaimas' refusal to leave the wounded behind is well-documented; during the Reclamation, Jaimas famously dragged a crippled trooper some 5 miles back to friendly lines. On the occasions when Jaimas himself has suffered a major injury, his troops have always, likewise, managed to carry him back to friendly lines and to the medics. Jaimas has recieved countless injuries over the years, and has the scars to prove it. An occasional joke made by Raxian soldiers is that so long as Raxis' medics can continue to patch him back up, he'll continue to serve on the front lines. Jaimas is almost as well-known for the fact that he has two wives - Elhena Scellanta, and Aurelis, respectively. Whilst Jaimas himself has refused to discuss the exact details of how this came about, it is strongly believed to have had something to do with an incident regarding the Dragon Council. Regardless of the cause, Aurelis and Elhena both seem acutely aware of one another, so the details of their relationship is, perhaps, best left nebulous. Jaimas has a single child - his daughter Zoe - who happens to be the apple of her father's eye. ---- History: Ekris War Era Jaimas' childhood took place far from the Ekris War itself - in a tiny town called Laren's Cape, and for many years, he would never have any real first-hand knowledge of it. This changed when he was about 8; a freak accident during a battle between Avonellan and Funkytonian forces led to a downed aircraft hitting his home. Jaimas' mother didn't survive the blast; his father never really recovered from the incident. Jaimas himself moved in with his uncle in Isengard, a larger city in Funkytown, where he would spend the next 6 years. His uncle, one Ashe Devane, was a former Paramisian military instructor, long since retired. Jaimas learned a fair bit of swordsmanship and the basics of how to fight from him, and earned a small bit of money by helping him teach classes. Jaimas was left without a place to stay once again some time later, when a seemingly-random break-in and murder took place, costing Jaimas his uncle and leaving him as a murder suspect, predominantly by accident. Afraid and alone, Jaimas fled the second town he called home, with only a rudimentary grasp of what, exactly, had happened that night. Lacking anywhere else to go, Jaimas wound up wandering further into the Aress desert, a massive stretch of desolate wilderness stretching up through Eulitracia's center. Dehydrated and with little in the way of supplies or shelter, Jaimas would have perished were it not for a chance encounter with a group of rogues in the region that took pity on him. War orphans, deserters from military units, and ne'er-do-wells all, the group offered Jaimas membership and a place to belong - a valuable thing to someone that had so little. The group Jaimas worked with had a simple but effective MO; the group would ambush and hijack Valendian supply convoys, leave the crews stranded in the desert with a few days worth of water and within walking distance of Funkytonian territory, and sell the stolen equipment - mostly weapons and military hardware - to Avonellan black marketeers for a profit. The amount of money this brought in was unheard of, at the time, for those that had only worked on the right side of the law, and for the first time in quite some time, Jaimas was able to live comfortably. It was his work with this group that put him into contact with a woman he would much later marry - Elhena Scellanta. Jaimas gained considerably more combat experience in these days, learning more about handling firearms and their maintenance, and pretty much anything anyone in his group was willing to teach him. As the war went on, however, Valendia became increasingly irritated with constant ambushes by both Funkytonian military patrols, and attacks by thieves and black marketeers. Desperate to bring the problem to an end quickly, Valendia sent in a particularly large contingent of the 473rd Penal Unit as opposed to actual cargo on one run, hoping that the brigands would jump at the bait. The group was severely outgunned by the Valendian military unit, but were actually holding their ground fairly well until one member of their unit - an officer, who later turned out to be none other than Brooke Canciaris - arrived, and began supporting her unit with magic. Jaimas attempted to intercept and hopefully stop her before the Valendians could re-acquire momentum, but was unsuccessful at this, and, along with much of his group, was captured. Those captured were offered a choice: A mandatory two-year contract in the Penal Units, or the firing squad. Jaimas had originally intended to make a break for it, but wound up, instead, bartering for Elhena's release; in exchange for her going free, Jaimas would agree to the contract. Jaimas being the only one insane enough to try to force his way past Brooke's troops to engage Brooke herself left a strong enough impression on Colonel Varne that the Valendian officer agreed, albeit over protests from Brooke. Valendian Military Service Jaimas' service in the Valendian Military was anything but a smooth transition. As part of the penal units, he saw the worst parts of humanity from both his own command units and from his own squad members. Considered 100% expendable by most Valendian commanders, the low-rankers amongst these troops saw horrendous rates of attrition, with nearly 60% of their members failing to survive their first mission for a great many assignments. Still Jaimas persisted, survived, and endured, and over time, rose in rank to head his own squad. By this point, years of experience had given Jaimas what he needed to survive; he had an innate grasp of tactical command and proved to be a masterful strategist. He continued to butt heads with officers at the time, most notably Brooke, who tended to look the other way towards what the troops in the Penal Units had to experience. Opportunity arose when Brooke attempted to defect from Valendia along with a sizable portion of the 473rd. Jaimas' unit was one of the few Valendian units available that could immediately pursue Brooke's force group - the bulk of the Valendian forces in the region had been preparing for an invasion of Avonell, and only Jaimas' unit was in any position to try to intercept Brooke's before it could flee. Jaimas' unit immediately used the opportunity to make a demand: that they would prevent Brooke's unit from crossing the southern border, but in exchange, wanted out of the Valendian military. The Valendian military conceded to the demand after considerable duress, and Jaimas' unit moved to stop Brooke. Despite multiple attempts - including a direct fight with Brooke herself atop a Valendian transport train - Jaimas and his unit were unsuccessful at preventing Brooke from activating the stolen airship and fleeing Valendia with it. They were, however, successful in maintaining the letter of their agreement: Brooke had, due to damage to the ship, fled the region via the eastern border, in order to make repairs. Half of Jaimas' unit was, indeed, permitted to leave the 473rd, but Jaimas himself and the other half of it were held on until the war's end, nearly a year later. Post-Ekris War and the Falstine Incident Jaimas left Valendia after his term of service expired and went over the proverbial fence to work for the government of Daramir, a long-standing enemy of Valendia. Jaimas' years of experience were put to the test as an investigator and operative for the Daramiran government's Internal Ministry. Predominantly, his unit was used for dealing with situations that were too important to leave to Daramir's police or military, or dealt with national security. A secondary role of the unit was to clandestinely investigate various sites in an attempt to dig up dirt or intel on various projects that other governments were working on. It was in this time that Jaimas wound up getting an assignment that would set his course for the rest of his life: Daramir wanted Jaimas to, with a team of operatives, investigate a particularly suspicious facility in Paramis in an attempt to dig up dirt on a long-time political enemy. What Jaimas found was just that - and then some. The facility belonged to the Valendian government, it had been attacked by a mercenary unit with the aid of the country of Maletta, and Maletta had then, inexplicably, turned around and backstabbed the unit had just hired. Anxious to find more potential dirt from its long-time rivals, Daramir sent Jaimas' team to continue their investigation. This assignment took him all across Fontraile, and then from there to Velgarde as he and his unit tracked down the full truth of the incident. In their investigation, they uncovered that the Country of Maletta, while extremely small, had been a major factor in the Miranda Disaster - and that Valendia had been complicit in this due to Maletta's ongoing research regarding members of the Canciaris lineage. Maletta had secured several corpses of the lineage - including Brooke's mother - after the disaster, and with the successful capture of a live specimen, they were hoping to complete their project - a way to artificially infuse their rank-and-file soldiers with powerful magic. During the investigation, Valendia threw numerous procedural roadblocks in the path of Jaimas' unit, and resulted to several out-and-out assassination attempts when these failed. One of these attempts was by none other than Colonel Varne himself, who Jaimas engaged and executed. Daramir acted fast based on Jaimas' intel, and raided the facility. Brooke was freed from captivity, and Daramir found what it had been looking for - an inordinate amount of evidence linking both Valendia and Maletta, indelibly, to the Miranda Disaster. Using its committee chair on the League of Nations, Daramir went forward with bringing its evidence forward on the international stage. The bulk of Jaimas' unit was called in to testify regarding their assignment. In a hurry to do anything necessary to mitigate the damage, Valendia made multiple attempts to make the problem go away - including bribes. Jaimas himself proved to have a price, and accepted a fair-sized bit of land in what was currently Zalen, before going over the fence and making himself scarce. His doing so did relatively little to harm Daramir's case; quite the contrary, it is Brooke and her own testimony - as well as the revelation of her true identity as the last surviving member of Miranda's royal family - that wound up saddling Valendia with countless restrictions and forcing the country to pay reparations to the Kingdom of Miranda. Brooke returned to Miranda to rebuild, but for Jaimas, it was only the beginning of a far grander plan.... The Reclamation Jaimas himself proved quite an opportunist. A side effect of Valendia's sanctions is that it was forbidden to ever again interfere with business on Fontraile, except in regards to its defensive alliance (with Paramis). Zalen, where Jaimas' tiny stretch of land was, was a territory that Valendia had conquered, and which only had token defenses. Knowing from his assignments what Valendia had wrought in the region - forced labor camps and worse just being the tip of the iceberg - Jaimas came upon a bold plan - to take on Valendia's forces in the region, and forge a new, better place from the ashes of what Valendia had done. Realizing the possibilities at his disposal, Jaimas began to quietly recruit personnel from disaffected personnel from Valendia's mining camps all across the country - and supplementing these with friends and allies of his he had met over his career - as well as several merc units. Over the course of three months, what started as a few troops with guns was gradually grown into a stronger fighting force, and soonafter, Jaimas' force group stormed one of Valendia's largest mining camps in the region, slaughtering the guards and liberating most of the miners at the site. The initial attack was a resounding success, but Jaimas' limited resources meant that it was unlikely that his forces could keep this up should the Valendian troops rally. Fortunately, Hevaraz, through Queen Brooke of Miranda's husband, Jacob Lavitz - a long-term friend of Jaimas - got involved, and, thrilled with the possibility of a large, Hevaraz-friendly government popping up where once there had been a hostile territory, began funneling weapons, equipment, and vehicles to Jaimas' forces en masse. Bit by bit, site by site, Jaimas' forces began to take Zalen from the Valendian Military. The attacks could not have come at a worse time for the Valendians; hamstrung by sanctions from the League of Nations, It was expressly forbidden from sending reinforcements directly to the region, lest it have to provoke a response from Funkytonian and Darmiran blockade forces. The Reclamation Forces took a particularly long time attempting to recruit the indigenous Viera tribes of the region, who had suffered mightily at the hands of the Valendians, and had wound up deeply insular and xenophobic as a result. Within 7 months, the entire country was subdued, and the newly-founded country of Raxis emerged from the ashes. Jaimas was pushed towards the mantle of leadership with overwhelming public support, and became the de facto ruler of the country, taking his long-time lover, Elhena Scellanta, as his queen. Support from other countries - mostly Hevaraz, but also Sigilus, Neo Arcadia, and Miranda, flooded the region, and in time, the country found its feet. The Raxian Border War Raxis' newfound government found itself facing routine challenges immediately - so soon after its first and only victory over Valendia, Raxis found itself once again at war. Numerous militant groups had a vested interest in destabilizing the newly-formed government, not the least of which were Regina and Tal's groups, respectively. The latter was particularly nasty, and made numerous overtones to try to subvert the new-found government's authority and blackmail or bribe officials. When it became clear that much of the new government's personnel would not cooperate, an attempt was made on the life of the recently-appointed Lord Castellan Jaimas - an attempt which failed. Raxis immediately moved to attack what it believed to be several installations used by Tal's forces, only to find themselves overwhelmed. Raxis' troops had to learn several fast - and painful lessons - in the transition from "group of insurgents with guns" to "dedicated fighting force." Unfortunately, Raxis' fledgling military was no match for Tal's forces, and routinely found themselves pushed back. Even the best of the Raxian military was little match for the might of Tal's non-human troops in close-combat, and for a good bit of time, the situation looked grim. Salvation for the Raxians came in the form of the country's bitingly cold winter. Not fully prepared for constant blizzard conditions, Tal's forces were largely immobilized by the heavy snow and freezing cold, and forced into defensive operations to keep the territory they had siezed. Sensing an opportunity, Jaimas began ordering a massive refit program for the Raxian military, ordering new weapons and equipment for its infantry, new vehicles, and programs to be undertaken to help counteract Tal's forces' use of spellcasters and psychics. The country also called extensively upon its allies in Hevaraz, who sent airstrikes and support across the border to aid the Raxian military. The next time that Tal's forces met with the Raxians on the battlefield - nearly 4 months later, they faced a very different enemy - one well-armed and well-equipped, trained to deal with even heavy threats, and with the firepower and wherewithal to hold the line. Tal's forces, already on the defensive, began to lose chunks of territory it had originally siezed, and Raxis was entirely under the control of the Raxians once more.